1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the creation, printing and assembling of books or documents. More particularly, it relates to the rapid generation or printing of personalized books, while a purchaser waits.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, there exist methods for creating personalized books that incorporate into a pre-prepared general story various items of personal information, usually having to do with the purchaser and/or the intended recipient of the book, such as their names, the names of related parties, residence or geographic information, as well as other personalized information.
In particular, two methods for producing such personalized books have become known and are practiced in the industry. Each of the two methods utilizes non-standard page sizes. That is, the pages used to form the personalized book are neither letter size, 81/2.times.11 inches, legal size, 81/2.times.14 inches, or DIN A4 size, 21.0.times.29.7 cm. paper as is regularly handled by most commercially available printers. This makes the production of books by these methods difficult, time-consuming and expensive because individual sheets are required to be hand fed, in a labor-intensive operation, through a printer. In lieu of this hand-feeding operation, a specialized printer is required to be used. In both cases, the process is expensive, either because of either the increased cost of special hardware or the increased cost of prolonged manual effort.
The first known method for producing personalized books uses non-standard size coated paper for all its pages. This method requires double printing, i.e., the printing of both text and pictures on both sides of each book sheet that is fed through the printer. Each of the non-standard size coated pages, preprinted with the book's illustrations, must be hand fed through a printing device not once, but twice, so that the printed text of the story is placed on both sides of each page, in addition to the preprinted illustrations. This creates a further disadvantage because the first pass through the printing device renders a sheet hot and somewhat damp and warped, making the required second pass through the printing device difficult. Obtaining a perfect or near-perfect sheet when such a second pass is necessary is extremely difficult and can frequently result in wasted pages and increased time and effort to produce a completed personalized book.
In the second method for generating personalized books, again using irregular size paper, the disadvantage of the two-pass method is overcome to some extent. In this second method, although text must be printed on both sides of a sheet, text and only text, without any illustrations at all, is printed only on less expensive, less fragile, non-coated paper. This rougher, plainer paper with the text printed on front and back is then interleaved with sheets of glossier, coated type paper containing only preprinted illustrations for the book. This improves somewhat the results obtained by using the two-pass text printing operation of the first method, but causes the resulting book to contain pages of vastly different textures. The interleaving of the rough, less expensive paper with the preferred, coated paper makes the final book less attractive and, therefore, less desirable.
The method of the present invention overcomes the aforementioned and other disadvantages and provides a method that is faster, more cost effective and highly desirable to purchasers. The method of the present invention solves the two-pass problem altogether by using only the glossy or coated type of paper for all pages of the book and printing text only on a single side of each sheet. This method requires, therefore, that each sheet only be fed through the printing device to affix text one time, eliminating the problems caused when a second pass is required. Requiring printing only on one side of each sheet of book pages allows coated paper, with or without illustrations, to be used throughout the book.
The resulting personalized books produced by the method of the present invention are more attractive because they contain only coated, high-quality pages, giving the book an even texture throughout. Further, because the method of the present invention utilizes standard size paper, i.e., letter, legal and A4 sizes, high-quality personalized books can be produced without the time-consuming and expensive processing of nonstandard size paper or the inevitable warping inherent in other known methods. The use of standard size pages obviates the need for manual feeding of pages into the printing device as well as the need to purchase expensive, specialized hardware or a printing device equipped with an adjustable page feeder to handle odd-size paper. Furthermore, unlike other known systems, the present invention is very flexible and can handle virtually any printer configuration; known systems are very limited as to the printers that can be utilized. All of the aforementioned features of the present invention, coupled with the use of specially marked, correlated book sheets, jackets and programs, allows personalized books of high quality to be generated in accordance with the method of the present invention within minutes, a fraction of the time required using existing methods, while a purchaser waits.